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HUNTSVILLE, ONT.—While healthy choices from Canada’s Food Guide are served up in camp dining halls, new, off the chart grub is on the menu at wilderness cookouts.

Those food groups include tube steaks (a.k.a. hot dogs) roasting to bursting, marshmallows melting into sticky globs and charred macaroni and cheese stuck to the bottom of a blackened pot. Mmm, Mmm good. Natural ingredients may include dried Tamarisk needles, but only to help start the campfire. Fold in friends who laugh their heads off at silly skits and sing tongue twisting songs and ‘Bam,’ the experience becomes unforgettable long after the flames have gone out.

It does at Camp Huronda where kids with Type 1 diabetes learn to take control of their health and indulge in the same experiences as other kids. Sarah Minacs, 15, wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

“I don’t think I would be comfortable at another camp,” said the Grade 10 student at Unionville High School who was at Huronda for her third time. Camp reinforced what she’d learned about taking care of herself at the hospital and during doctor visits. More important, Sarah learned she wasn’t alone.

“I was so excited to see that everyone at camp was like me and had the same struggles and thoughts,” she said. “It was crazy to see other kids like me.”

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Like Sarah, they test blood sugars four times a day and are monitored by a team of doctors, registered nurses and dieticians on site round the clock. Some inject using a special insulin pen while others use a pump that administers insulin as needed just like a healthy pancreas.

That done, the kids are off swimming, hiking, canoeing, kayaking, climbing the high ropes, working on arts and crafts projects and just having fun with their pals.

“I miss camp when I’m not here,” said Sarah. “It’s always sad to leave my friends and leave the lake and all the activities.” And hot dogs just don’t taste the same anywhere else.

Neither do the marshmallows for Daniel Vandenberk, 10, who was at Huronda for the first time this summer. Diagnosed when he was 2 years old, being at the camp on Waseosa Lake was helping him take responsibility for managing his condition.

“I’m learning to self-inject at camp,” he said. “I’ve got it under control.”

That freed up most of his time for serious fun like learning wilderness survival “and canoeing which is easier than kayaking,” said the Grade 5 student at Ellwood Memorial Public School in Bolton. He also loves the meals prepared by a real chef in the kitchen of the main dining hall where healthy food groups are served.

A highlight was the overnight canoe trip to a nearby site in the woods where Daniel said he burned marshmallows over the campfire and loved them and slept on a rock in a tent. “Everything about camp is the best,” he proclaimed. “It’s fun and interesting and I’m coming back next year.”

Huronda was established in 1964 by the Canadian Diabetes Association and has been a summer getaway for thousands of children — most of whom wouldn’t have had the opportunity to go to camp otherwise. Camp Director Kale Boehmer is a veteran and has been coming for 16 years. “I’ve been here so long — it’s really home away from home. Everything I did in life started here.”

Huronda is also where Boehmer, 27, became a leader and role model — just like the others who came before and after.

With your gift, the Fresh Air Fund can help send 25,000 disadvantaged and special needs children to camp. If you have benefitted from the Fresh Air Fund or have a story to tell, email lferenc@thestar.ca or phone 416-869-4309.

Goal: $650,000

To date: $515,018.

By cheque: Mail to the Toronto Star Fresh Air Fund, One Yonge St., Toronto, ON M5E 1E6

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